Scientific documentation and visualization techniques

Photography and video

Scientific documentation at CIUS (German)

We use digital single lens reflex or system cameras for both, photo and video. In combination with a photomacroscope or macro lenses and extension tubes we achieve documentation of objects to a minimum size of 3 mm. The very limited depth of field in macro photography can be exceeded by a special method: focus stacking is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field than any of the individual source images.

> Goldammer Focus Stacking Device, Combine ZM

HDR photography

Oftenly there is a big difference between the dynamic range of an object (range between the lightest and darkest areas of an object) and the limited dynamic range of a camera (capability to record an object in its whole range between the lightest and darkest areas).The standard dynamic range obtained by taking a single image with a camera is called low dynamic range - LDR. HDR - high dynamic range imaging allows a greater dynamic range by taking a series of images in different exposures that are finally combined with a HDR image processing software.

> Photomatix Pro, Adobe Photoshop

Time lapse photography

If you want to give a short-time overview of a time-consuming process you can either record on video and compress it from real time to any desired duration. Or you can take single shots in previously defined intervals, import them into a video editing software and mount them to a time lapse video.

> Adobe PremierePro

Panorama and object movie photography

We create interactive 360° panoramas to visualize the physical environment at a certain place, e.g. a sampling site, and we produce object movies which are interactive media that show single objects from a 360° view. With a mouse the user is capable to navigate in all directions through panoramas and move around objects. In a virtual tour we link panoramas and object movies with each other or with a map to give a survey on a location combined with special insights into certain objects. Embedding into Google Maps is also possible.

> PTGUI Pro, Garden Gnome Pano2VR, TYPO3

Animation

If it is not possible to show certain biological processes by means of photography and video, we create computer animations as vivid demonstration material for teaching purposes.

> Adobe Flash, Adobe AfterEffects

Media design

With an image editing software we do contrast/color correction, retouching, montages and merging of images and text. > Adobe Photoshop

A video editing software enables us to integrate videoclips, animations, written and spoken texts, images, graphics and sounds in order to export a single video file of the completed film.> Adobe Premiere Pro

The exported film file can either be published on the internet or processed with an authoring software to finally produce a DVD or bluray disc. > Adobe Encore

The creation of printed matters, e.g. DVD-covers and brochures, is done with a desktop publishing software.> Adobe InDesign